Gorham - Newton On God's Relation To Space and Time

Newton on God’s Relation to Space and Time:
The Cartesian Framework

Geoffrey Gorha m
Macalester College, Philosophy Department, 1600 Grand Avenue,
St. Paul, MN 55105, USA, ggorham@macalester.edu
Abstract: Beginning with Berkeley and Leibniz, philosophers have been puzzled by the
close yet ambivalent association in Newton’s ontology between God and absolute space
and time. The 1962 publication of Newton’s highly philosophical manuscript De Gravita-
tione has enriched our understanding of his subtle, sometimes cryptic, remarks on the
divine underpinnings of space and time in better-known published works. But it has
certainly not produced a scholarly consensus about Newton’s exact position. In fact, three
distinct lines of interpretation have emerged: (1) Independence: space and time are not
essentially related to God. (2) Causation: space and time are caused by God. (3) Assimi-
lation: space and time are attributes of God. This paper defends the third interpretation
against the first two by drawing out the under-appreciated influence of Descartes’ meta-
physics on Newton’s ‘physico-theology’.
1. Introduction
Beginning with Berkeley and Leibniz,1 philosophers have been intrigued

and puzzled by the evidently close, yet still ambivalent, association in New-
ton’s ontology between God and absolute space and time. In the General
Scholium to the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton writes that
although God is not duration and space he nevertheless “constitutes” these
by existing always and everywhere.2 Earlier, in Query 20 to the (1706) Latin
edition of the Opticks, he notoriously speculates that although the world
is not God’s body, God is able to perceive and control the world directly
1 In Section 117 of the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), after devoting several
sections to empiricist criticisms of Newton’s absolute space, time and motion, Berke-
ley observes that “philosophers of great note have, from the difficulty they found
in conceiving either limits or annihilation of space, concluded it must be divine”
(Works, vol. 2; 1948–1957, 94). See also Section 54 of De Motu (Works, vol. 2;
1948–1957, 45 f.). In the letter that set off the famous (1715–1716) correspondence
with Clarke, Leibniz cites as evidence of the “decay” of natural religion in England
that “Sir Isaac Newton says that space is an organ which God uses to perceive things”
(Leibniz/Clarke 1717, First Letter; 2000, 4).
2 Newton 1999, 941.
Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie 93. Bd., S. 281–320 DOI 10.1515/AGPH.2011.013

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because objects in absolute space are “as it were in his sensory (tanquam
sensorio suo)”.3 But if space and time are not God, yet still constituted
by God’s existence, or by the frame of his consciousness, does that mean
they’re properties of God in something like the way my height and age are
properties of me? This seems to have been the understanding of Newton’s
champion Samuel Clarke, who explains in his fourth letter to Leibniz (1716)
that space is not a substance in its own right, but “a property of that which
is necessary”.4 Yet Newton himself re-muddies the waters in a Preface
(Avertissement) he drafted for a 1720 edition of the Leibniz-Clarke corre-
spondence, where he cautions that the “unavoidable narrowness of lan-
guage” must not confuse readers: space and time are ‘properties’ of God
only in the sense that they are “unbounded consequences of the existence of
a substance which is really necessarily and substantially omnipresent and
eternal”.5 This remark clarifies, at least in part, the logical relationship of
space and time to God: they are not merely contingent properties of God
(like my height and age), but necessary consequences of his existence. How-
ever, it does not explain the ontological ground of this relationship: why
does God’s existence necessarily imply absolute space and time (if they are
not simply God himself)?
Unfortunately, the draft Preface was probably Newton’s final word
on the subject. The good news is that in recent years scholars have mined
several earlier unpublished sources, which have shed considerable light on
the theological foundations of Newtonian space and time. The most im-
portant of these is unquestionably Newton’s lengthy manuscript known as
De Gravitatione et Aequipondio Fluidorum. De Gravitatione (as I shall
henceforth refer to it) was probably written a few years before the appear-
ance of the Principia (1687), but was first published only in 1962, by Hall
and Hall.6 Ostensibly a treatise on hydrostatics, De Gravitatione consists
largely of a thorough critique of Descartes’ relationist conceptions of place
and motion together with a detailed articulation and defense of Newton’s
3 Newton 1706, 315. In later editions, this becomes Query 28. See for example Newton
2004, 130. For discussion see Koyré and Cohen 1961 and section 5 below.
4 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Clarke’s Fourth Reply; 2000, 30.
5 Published in Koyré and Cohen 1962, 96 f. Koyré and Cohen reproduce five drafts
(A–E). The line quoted here is essentially the same in all five drafts.
6 Newton 1962, 89–164. All page references in what follows are to the recently re-pub-
lished Janiak edition of De Gravitatione (Newton 2004, 12–39), translated by Chris-
tian Johnson with Janiak’s assistance, which revises and corrects the Hall and Hall
translation. The Halls initially dated the work between 1664 and 1668 (Newton 1962,
90). But Dobbs’ more thorough evaluation suggests a much later year of composition,
perhaps 1684 or 1685 (Dobbs 1991, 144). This means De Gravitatione was not a mere
juvenile work, but instead indicative of his thinking around the time of De Motu and
the Principia itself (cf. McGuire 2000).

Newton on God’s Relation to Space and Time: The Cartesian Framework 283
own absolutist theories of space and time.7 More importantly for the pres-
ent topic, he also discusses extensively, and with considerable philosophical
sophistication, the connection between absolute space and time and God.
While scholarly analysis of De Gravitatione has greatly enriched our
understanding of Newton’s subtle, sometimes cryptic, reflections on the
‘physico-theology’8 of space and time, it has certainly not produced a con-
sensus about Newton’s exact position. In fact, three distinct lines of inter-
pretation have emerged:
(1) Independence: space and time are not essentially related to God.
(2) Causation: space and time are caused by God.
(3) Assimilation: space and time are attributes of God.
Emphasizing Newton’s empiricism, and general metaphysical reticence,
Independence attempts to establish that the theological concepts he some-
times invoked are fundamentally irrelevant to his rigorous physical expli-
cation of absolute space and time. Causation draws on the hierarchical
Neo-Platonic metaphysics of Newton’s Cambridge milieu and underscores
his explicit characterization of space and time in De Gravitatione as “ema-
native effects” of God. Both of these interpretations can claim significant
texts in their favor and both have attracted able defenders in recent years.
However, I will maintain that Assimilation garners the strongest textual
support from a broad range of Newton’s works, published and unpublished,
early and late. So it is not surprising that Assimilation was endorsed by a
number of eminent twentieth-century historians of natural philosophy, in-
cluding Burtt, Koyré, Jammer, and Grant.9
But Assimilation has fallen somewhat out of favor lately. In my view, this
is due to the apparent absence – in comparison with the other two readings –
of a detailed and plausible metaphysical framework for the account. In the
context of seventeenth-century metaphysics, what could it mean for Newto-
nian space and time to be attributes of God? Some earlier defenders of As-
7 For recent discussions of De Gravitatione that emphasize the dynamical criticisms of

Descartes’ physical concepts, see Stein 1967, Rynasiewicz 1995, and DiSalle 2006.
Shapiro 1974 examines the hydrostatical elements in detail.
8 This is Kant’s label for the branch of natural theology that “infers the properties and
the existence of an author of the world from the constitution, the order, and the unity
that are found in this world” (Critique of Pure Reason, A 632/B 660; 1998, 584). But
already in Newton’s day a slew of ‘physico-theologies’ were conceived by English
authors in the hope of unifying the new science with traditional religion (or at least
shoring up the latter): Charleton, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of
Nature: A Physico-Theologicall Treatise (1652); Boyle, Physico-Theological Consider-
ations about the Possibility of the Resurrection (1675); Derham, Physico-Theology or
Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation (1711).
See further Manuel 1974, 24, and Harrison 2005.
9 Burtt 1952, 259; Jammer 1954, 111; Koyré 1957, 227, and 1965, 104; Grant 1981, 243 f.
See also Gibson 1960, 247; Von Leyden 1968, 252; Power 1970, 294; Randall 1970,
341 f.; Baker 1930, 29 f.; Westfall 1958, 199; Funkenstein 1986, 96 f.; Hall 1992, 272.

similation pointed to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More as a possible

philosophical source of Newton’s model. But although More indeed refers
to space as an “attribute” of God,10 he fails to explain how this attribute fits
within his orthodox substance/accident ontology, which Newton explicitly
repudiates as inapplicable to space and time. Others cite the absolutist
views, well known to Newton, of the modern Epicureans Gassendi and
Charleton. But their metaphysical framework is very different from New-
ton’s, since they regard space and time as lacking positive reality and onto-
logically independent of God.
In what follows I aim to strengthen the case for Assimilation by showing
that Newton derives his metaphysical conception of God’s relation to space
and time from a source he was studying carefully while composing
De Gravitatione: Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy. Although Descartes
obviously does not conceive of space and time themselves in Newton’s
absolutist fashion, he develops a theory of attributes that serves perfectly
Newton’s subtle and unconventional view of absolute space and time’s
grounding in the original, infinite being. In particular, I will argue that in
Newton the relation between God and space and time should be under-
stood precisely as Descartes articulates the relation between substances and
their ‘most general’ attributes: duration, number, order, etc. If this is right,
then just as for Descartes a substance is only conceptually distinct from its
duration and number, for Newton God is not really distinct from space and
time. This is not to say that God simply is space and time, as Newton often
stresses. For Cartesian attributes are neither substances in their own right
nor mere accidents of a substance. Rather they are, as Descartes puts it,
“modes under which we conceive” (AT 8A, 26) a thing, in this case God. In
this very special sense, Leibniz was not unfair to associate Newton with
those “modern Englishmen” who hold space to be “God himself or one of
his attributes”.11
In section 2, after a brief overview of De Gravitatione’s analysis of space
and time, I criticize Independence and Causation on textual and philo-
sophical grounds. In section 3, I explain and defend my Cartesian version of
Assimilation. In section 4, I consider, as potential objections, certain sur-
prising implications of this reading, perhaps most notably that Newtonian
space and time are not really distinct from one another. I will maintain that
properly understood these implications are not drawbacks, but rather vir-
tues of Assimilation. Finally, in section 5, I show that my Cartesian account
of Assimilation, although based on De Gravitatione, is fruitfully extended
to other relevant texts, including the well-known passages from the Princi-
pia and Opticks that were mentioned in the opening paragraph of this essay.
10 For example More, Enchiridium Metaphysicum, ch. 8; 1995, 57.

11 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Third Letter; 2000, 14.

2. Against Independence and Causation
The first part of De Gravitatione presents a devastating barrage of objec-

tions against Descartes’ purely relational conceptions of place and motion.
For example, Newton points out that since for Descartes the place of an
object is the combined surfaces of the bodies that surround it, and these
bodies are in constant flux, it follows that motion from place to place in-
volves no definite distance or velocity: “It is impossible to pick out the place
in which the motion began – that is, the beginning of the space traversed –
for this space no longer exists after the motion is completed, so the space
traversed, having no beginning, can have no length” (DG 20). From such
considerations, Newton concludes, “it is necessary that the definition of
places, and hence of local motion, be referred to some motionless thing
such as extension alone or space alone (sola extensio vel spatium) insofar
as it can be understood truly distinct from bodies” (DG 20 f.). This leads
to a description of Newton’s alternative model of ‘space alone’: infinite in
all directions, Euclidean, eternal, immobile, homogeneous and independent
of bodies. By analogy, duration is without beginning or end, ubiquitous,
immutable, uniform, and independent of motion. Furthermore, as will be
discussed below, space and time are neither substances nor accidents, but
rather ‘affections’ of being. Finally, space and time are not created, but
rather ‘emanative effects’ of the first being. Here is Newton’s famous gloss
of this last point:
Space is an affection of a being just as a being (Spatium est entis quatenus ens affectio).
No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is every-
where, created minds are somewhere, and body is in the space that it occupies; and
whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that
space is an emanative effect (effectus emanativus) of the first existing being, for if any
being whatsoever is posited, space is posited. And the same may be asserted of du-
ration: for certainly both are affections or attributes (affectiones sive attributa) of a
being according to which the quantity of any thing’s existence is individuated to the de-
gree that the size of its presence and persistence is specified. (DG 25 f.)
It is natural to suppose that calling space and time emanative effects of the
first existing being amounts to saying they’re produced by God. But this
supposition is rejected under the Independence reading of De Gravitatione,
which I now consider.
Independence falls in with a tradition of Newton exegesis, stretching back
through expositors like Toulmin and Mach, that downplays the role of
speculative and theological elements in his natural philosophy. Unlike the
rationalist Descartes, the empiricist Newton does not purport to deduce his
physical principles from a priori metaphysical premises about God, sub-
stance, and eternal essences. Rather, his notions of space and time, true vs.
relative motions, force, and so on, are all fundamentally empirical in origin

and content. For instance, as Robert DiSalle explains,12 the notion of ‘ab-
solute time’ is derived from the distinction between inertial vs. accelerated
motions: the absolute time interval between two events is simply the time
measured by an ideal ‘inertial clock’ whose motions are never accelerated.
And whether a given motion is accelerated or not is determined empirically
in accordance with the three laws of motion. Similarly, ‘absolute space’
is distinguished from relative space by the forces experienced by objects
in true vs. relative motion, such as are manifested by the different states of
the famous rotating bucket. Again, such states are empirically defined and
measured in accordance with the known laws of motion. The ‘absolutes’
can therefore be fully articulated within the empirical and nomological
framework of Newton’s physics, without invoking a priori metaphysics
or unobservable entities. Referring absolute space and time to God, the
way Newton does in the queries to the Opticks and the General Scholium,
merely lathers unhealthy theological icing on an otherwise nourishing
scientific cake.
The Independence approach has been most fully applied to De Gravita-
tione by Howard Stein.13 But Stein’s treatment, in spite of its subtlety and
influence, has recently been exposed to very thorough and forceful criti-
cism.14 Therefore, my own critique will be brief and focused on two key in-
terpretive issues. First, Stein points out that in the crucial gloss quoted
above Newton says that space is the emanative effect of the first existing
being (presumably God) because “if any being whatsoever is posited, space
is posited” (DG 25). He takes this to mean that in principle space results
from anything that exists. God is not essential for space, he simply happens
12 See DiSalle 2002 and 2006, ch. 2.

13 See in particular his overview of Newton’s metaphysics (Stein 2002). See also Stein
1967. DiSalle’s very clear accounts of space and time in De Gravitatione (2002 and
2006) are in the Independence vein, not even mentioning God’s relation to space and
time. Toulmin’s two-part essay (1959; see especially the second part) provides a thor-
ough early defense of Independence, but does not discuss De Gravitatione since it was
then still unpublished. Mach 1919, chs. 2 and 4, is a classic inspiration for empiricist
reconstructions of Newton. See Barbour 2001, 617–623, for a recent Machian gloss of
De Gravitatione. Rynasiewicz 1995 provides a useful critical overview of the ‘Machian
Legacy’ in recent scholarship on Newtonian space and time. Hall 1992 presents a bal-
anced overview of twentieth-century scholarly perspectives on Newton’s metaphysical
and theological influences.
14 See especially Janiak 2008, 155–158, and Slowik 2009 and forthcoming. Recently,
Schliesser (forthcoming) has raised an objection to Stein’s Independence model that
seems very apt. Newton clearly thinks that certain properties of space are explained by
the fact that they are derived from God. For example, “space is eternal in duration and
immutable in nature because it is the emanative effect of an eternal and immutable
being” (DG 26). So unless we advert to its divine source, the eternity and immutability
of space is inexplicable. However, as I will argue further below, the explanatory re-
lation required is much more intimate than causality.

to be the first being: “space is (some kind of) effect of the existence of any-
thing; and therefore of the first-existing being”.15
But it is plausible to read the claim that positing anything at all also
posits space as simply repeating the claim made a couple lines earlier that
“No being exists which is not related to space in some way” (DG 25). Yet
granted anything that exists must occupy space in some way it surely does
not follow that Newton’s ‘space alone’ – “eternal, infinite, uncreated, uni-
form throughout” (DG 33) – must exist so long as any finite body (or mind)
does. Consider the analogy between space and duration (which Newton
himself exploits throughout De Gravitatione). Presumably, since change
implies time, if any motion or change whatsoever is posited, time is posited.
But it is hard to see why any brief motion would imply a time that is infinite,
uncreated and uniform. Certainly no Aristotelian who defines time as the
‘number of movement’ would accept such an implication.16 It would not be
implausible, however, to infer infinite, eternal space and time from the exist-
ence of an infinite and eternal being. So a more charitable reading than
Stein’s of the passage above is that space is an emanative effect of God alone
because God is the only being whose existence entails a space that we “posi-
tively and most thoroughly understand” to be infinite (DG 25). In other
words, the robust nature of the ‘space alone’ posited in De Gravitatione de-
pends on God. Newton makes this quite explicit: “space is eternal in du-
ration and immutable because it is the effect of an eternal and immutable
being” (DG 26).17
Stein cites another passage as “decisive” evidence18 that Newton’s space
is not theologically derived: “we have an absolute idea of it [i.e. extension;
G.G.] without any relationship to God and therefore we are able to conceive
it as existent while feigning the non-existence of God” (DG 31). However,
Newton’s target here is specifically Descartes’ notion of extension as equiv-
alent to body and his charge is conditional on that notion, as the first part
of the sentence invoked by Stein makes clear: “If we say with Descartes that
extension is body do we not manifestly offer a path to atheism […]?”
(DG 31) If Newton were saying that his own notion of extension can be con-
ceived apart from God he would be admitting his own complicity in the
promulgation of atheism. On the Cartesian view, we have a clear and dis-
15 Stein 2002, 268. See also Janiak who although critical of Stein’s attempt to de-couple
space and time from God nevertheless endorses Stein’s view that space would emanate
from whatever happened to be the first existing being, whether finite or infinite (2008,
145 f.). Janiak takes this as evidence that emanation is not efficient causation since it is
implausible to suppose a finite being could produce infinite space.
16 Aristotle, Physics, Bk. IV, ch. 10, 220a25; 1971, vol. 1, 373.
17 Slowik (forthcoming, 34 f.) provides a similar analysis of this passage. He also points
out (forthcoming, 8) that Newton never explicitly entertains the possibility that infi-
nite space could emanate from a finite being.
18 Stein 2002, 271.

tinct idea of body simply as extension and of God as infinite un-extended

thinking substance. For this reason, Newton charges, we can conceive Car-
tesian extension/matter while feigning the non-existence of God since they
have nothing in common. In contrast, Newton says we cannot posit bodies
as he conceives them “without positing that God exists” (DG 31). As we
shall see in a moment, this is because on the Newtonian conception bodies
are quantities of extension to which God continually delegates certain
powers. Nor can we conceive space apart from God since it is an “emanative
effect (effectus emanativus) of the first existing being” (DG 25). So the pas-
sage is not “decisive” evidence that Newtonian space is non-theological,
only that Descartes’ notion of body would make it so.19
But even if Stein has failed to show that Newtonian space is not essen-
tially dependent on God, the precise nature of this dependence remains to
be explained. Since Newton says repeatedly that space is an “emanative ef-
fect” of God, a natural reading is that God emanates space by producing it.
This is the reading I’ve dubbed Causation. Newton could easily have derived
a model of emanative causality from the work of his colleague, the eminent
Cambridge Platonist Henry More. Indeed, in a work owned by Newton, Im-
mortality of the Soul, More defines and employs a notion of emanative
causality that captures an important aspect of the relation between God and
space conveyed in De Gravitatione. More says that an emanative cause is
“such a cause as simply by being, no other activity or causality being inter-
posed, produces an effect”.20 Emanative effects are therefore ‘coexistent’
with the substances that produce them: “by the same reason the Effect is at
any time, it must be at all times, or so long that substance does exist”.21 In
19 Slowik makes a similar point. However, he regards Newton’s own model as “an at-
tempt to blur, or minimize any sharp distinction between mind and body” (forthcom-
ing, 16). But Newton is not interested in blurring the distinction between the divine
mind and body, only the distinction between God and space. Thus he attempts to ex-
plain how we can understand God to be diffused through space without having to
“imagine God to be like a body, extended and made of divisible parts” (DG 26). In the
General Scholium he declares that God “totally lacks any body and corporeal shape”
(1999, 942). Like Stein, Janiak interprets Newton as embracing the assumption that
we can conceive of extension apart from God. Following Sean Greenberg, he takes
this to mean only that space and God are merely “notionally distinct” in the sense of
Descartes – so we can form an idea of one without the other even though they are
not truly independent (2008, 154 n. 43). Although I am sympathetic with Greenberg’s
suggestion (see sections 3 and 4 below) this particular account of Stein’s “decisive”
passage cannot be right. For Descartes says we can think of merely conceptually dis-
tinct things separately only “confusedly” (AT 9B, 53) or at least not clearly and dis-
tinctly (AT 8A, 30). But why would Newton allege that maintaining we can conceive
of extension apart from God only confusedly offers a manifest path to atheism?
20 Immortality of the Soul, Bk. I, ch. 16; 1987, 37.
21 Immortality of the Soul, Bk. I, ch. 17; 1987, 38. For recent discussion of the ‘logic’ of
emanative causation among German Protestants around the turn of the seventeenth
century, see Blank 2009 and Mercer 2001, ch. 5.

other words, emanative causes necessarily produce their effects simply by

existing.
Newton uses very similar terms to distinguish the way bodies depend on
God from the way space does. Bodies are the result of contingent acts of the
divine will, which he labels ‘creation’. So there is a close analogy between
God’s production of bodies and our voluntary movements: “God may
appear (to our innermost consciousness) to have created bodies solely by
the act of will, just as we move our bodies solely by an act of will alone”
(DG 30). Space, in contrast, is “uncreated” (DG 33) because it is implied by
the very existence of God: “If space had ever not existed, God at that time
would have been nowhere” (DG 29). This amounts to saying God necessi-
tates space since for Newton to say something is nowhere “seems to be the
same as if we were to say it does not exist” (DG 31).22 So, like More’s ema-
native effects, Newton’s space is a ‘coexistent’ consequence of God’s being.
But despite this significant analogy, and the undeniable terminological
coincidence between Newton’s text and More’s, there are a number of rea-
sons why emanative causality in More’s sense cannot adequately capture
the De Gravitatione relationship between God and space and time. Consider
the most detailed recent defense of Causation, due to John Carriero.23 He
notes that on standard models such as More’s emanation is considered a
form of efficient, rather than formal or final, causality.24 In a groundbreak-
ing article on De Gravitatione J. E. McGuire had indicated that Newton’s
God could not be the efficient cause of space since space has no beginning
in time.25 However, Carriero pointed out that temporal priority of cause to
effect was not required in traditional models of efficient causality.26 Thomas
Aquinas, for example, found nothing philosophically problematic in cre-
ation from eternity.27 And More himself implies that emanative causes are
22 Cf. More: “it is plain that if a thing be at all, it must be extended” (Immortality of the
Soul, Preface; 1987, 7). In his attack on ‘Nullibism’, More goes so far as to assert that
even “moral, logical, and theological truths are indeed somewhere, namely in the soul
itself which conceives them” (Enchiridium Metaphysicum, ch. 27; 1995, 104).
23 See Carriero’s (1990) exchange with McGuire (1990). Whereas McGuire had pre-
viously rejected causal models, characterizing the space-God connection as mere
“ontic dependence” (1978a, 15), in the 1990 exchange he concedes: “the dependence
may be taken as causal but, if this is so, the distinction between ontic (my earlier view)
and causal dependence is extremely attenuated indeed” (McGuire 1990, 91; see also
2007, 123 f.). What I hope the present discussion will establish is that the God-space/
time relation is entirely ontic and not causal in any legitimate sense. Slowik (forthcom-
ing, 11; see also 2009, 437 f.) also endorses Causation, though his main conclusion is
that Newton’s ontology of space is robust, Neo-Platonic and theological, contrary to
Independence. In private correspondence, Slowik has suggested he takes Newton’s
emanation to be “a hybrid of a formal cause and a Morean attribute”.
24 Carriero 1990, 112.
25 McGuire 1978a, 16.
26 Carreiro 1990, 114.
27 See, for example, ST 1a, 46, art. 2; 1964–1981, vol. 8, 76–82.

typically simultaneous with their effects when he says that the effect must
exist at any time the cause does.
However, there are other commonly accepted conditions of efficient
causality that are not satisfied by the God/space relationship depicted in
De Gravitatione. For one, efficient causes are active. Suarez, for example,
defines an efficient cause as “the principle from which an effect flows forth,
or on which it depends, through an action (per actionem)”.28 It is precisely
the activity of efficient causes that distinguishes them from other Aristote-
lian types, according to Suarez. However, as both McGuire and Stein have
noted, there is no indication in Newton’s model of any activity in God’s
emanation of space.29
It is true, as Carriero points out,30 that in some scholastic accounts the
‘natural emanation’ of proper accidents (accidents that are necessary, but
not defining or essential) from their subjects is classified as efficient, and
therefore active, causality. Thus Aquinas regards the soul as actively pro-
ducing its powers and light as actively producing color.31 Similarly, Suarez
argues that cooling emanates naturally from water by an act.32 But in both
these authors the warrant for attributing activity to the subjects of natural
emanation is inextricably bound up with their brand of Aristotelian meta-
physics, and in particular the prior ‘actuality’ of substantial forms to acci-
dents. Thus, Aquinas says “the subject, forasmuch as it is in potentiality, is
receptive of the accidental form: but forasmuch as it is in act, it produces
it”.33 In other words, light actively emanates color simply because the ‘ac-
tuality’ of the light is prior. Similarly, Suarez writes, “since a substantial
form exists as a first act, whereas an accidental form exists as a second act,
it is probable that the substantial form has a certain power for having its
proper accidents emanate from it”.34 In this sense, he concludes, water ac-
tively produces its own cooling.
It is highly unlikely that this is what Newton intends by emanation. First,
emanation would then be ubiquitous – not only would space and time ema-
nate from God, but all natural powers and properties (mass, gravity, motion
and rest) would emanate from finite things. Second, Newton explicitly
denies that space is an accident, much less an accidental form (DG 22). In-
deed, Carriero points out in the draft Preface for the Des Maizeaux edition
of the Clarke-Leibniz Correspondence (see section 5 below) Newton is
anxious to block the impression Clarke gives that space and time are proper
28 MD 17, 1, 6; Suarez 1965, vol. 1, 582; 1994, 10.

29 McGuire 1990, 105; Stein 2002, 69.
30 Carriero 1990, 112.
31 ST 1a, 77, art. 6
32 MD 18, 3, 3–14; Suarez 1965, vol. 1, 615–619; 1994, 92–101.
33 ST 1a, 77, art. 6.
34 MD 18, 3, 4; Suarez 1965, vol. 1, 616; 1994, 94.

accidents or ‘propria’ of God.35 Third, De Gravitatione contains forceful at-

tacks on the Aristotelian ontology of substantial forms, which Newton dis-
misses as “unintelligible” (DG 31).
It is hard to find room for emanation as a kind of activity in Newton’s
anti-trinitarian and voluntarist theology of nature. In the Neo-Platonic
scheme of More, matter and motion emanate from the activity of an imma-
terial anima mundi or ‘Spirit of Nature’ that is in turn created by God. But
Newton employs no world-soul: “I do not see why God does not himself di-
rectly inform space with bodies” (DG 31).36 Under Newton’s voluntarism it
seems that everything in nature that is produced from God (i.e. everything
distinct from God) is a direct result of God’s will. Thus, he writes in the
theological manuscript known as ‘Irenicum’,
We are to believe that there is one ever-living omnipresent omnipotent omniscient invis-
ible God the creator of heaven & earth & of all things therein. That He is what he is by
the necessity of nature & that all other things are what they are by the power of his will.37
Since everything produced by God is willed, and since (as already noted)
space and time are not from God’s will, it follows that space and time are
not produced by God.38
There is another problem in taking More’s concept of emanation as New-
ton’s model for the divine origin of space and time. More takes it to be axio-
matic that an emanative effect “exceeds not the virtues and powers of the
cause”, but is rather “in due gradual proportions inferior to the cause”.39 So
35 Carriero 1990, 122 f.

36 From the General Scholium: “He rules all things not as the world-soul but as the lord
of all” (1999, 940). On Newton’s voluntarist antipathy to emanationist metaphysics,
see Manuel 1974, 69–73. On Newton’s rejection of the world-soul in particular, see
McGuire 1977. On the relations among God, space and the Spirit of Nature in More’s
system, see Boylan 1980.
37 Keynes Ms. 3, fol. 35. Similarly, the ‘Exposition of 2 Kings 17: 15 f.’: “The wisest
of beings requires of us to be celebrated not so much for his essence as for his actions,
the creating preserving & governing all things according to his good will & pleasure”
(Yahuda Ms. 21, fol. 2). In the Opticks, Query 30, Newton compares the power God
has to “form and reform the parts of the universe” to the power “of our own will to
move the parts of our own bodies” (2004, 138); “Only an intelligent being, by the
power of its will acting on account of final causes could bring about the variety of
things” (‘Tempus et Locus’, McGuire 1978b, 123). For accounts of Newton’s theologi-
cal voluntarism see Dobbs 1991, 110–117; Osler 1994, 151 f.; McGuire 1968; Heimann
1978; Guerlac 1983. For a recent dissenting opinion, see Harrison 2004. On Newton’s
theology more broadly, see Westfall 1958; Manuel 1974; Force and Popkin 1990 and
1999; Snobelen 2001.
38 It should be noted that for most scholastics, including Suarez, the action of efficient
causality is technically located in the patient or effect rather than the agent or cause.
It is doubtful Newton would accept this; but it does not help the Causation approach
in any case. For Newton specifically denies that there is any action in mere space
(DG 21).
39 Immortality of the Soul, Axiome XVIII–XIX; More 1987, 38.

all the powers of Newtonian space, such as the capacity to receive bodies of
various shapes and sizes, would need to be pre-contained to as great a de-
gree in God. Why then would God create space? Another of More’s axioms
of emanation makes this sort of problem clearer: “Magnitude cannot arise
out of mere non-Magnitudes”.40 From this More is driven to conclude that
the “First and Primest Essence” from which the world emanates must itself
be extended and “intellectually divisible” though “indiscerpible”.41 If New-
ton were adhering to the Morean version of emanation, he would likewise
need to hold that God is extended prior (at least metaphysically if not tem-
porally) to the space he emanates. Yet there is no evidence that Newton
holds this. On the contrary, his view seems to be that God is extended only
by virtue of space and time: “the quantity of the existence of God is eternal
in relation to duration and infinite in relation to the space in which he is
present” (DG 23).42
It may be that Newton’s version of emanation drops More’s axioms
requiring the virtues, powers and magnitudes of space and time to be pre-
contained in God. But similar constraints derive from Newton’s own reveal-
ing, but rarely discussed, assumptions about causality in De Gravitatione.
These assumptions are made in the course of Newton’s attack on Descartes’
theory of mind-body interaction. He argues that strict Cartesian dualists
are incapable of explaining God’s production of matter. If the distinction
between thinking and extended substances is “legitimate and complete”, he
writes, then “God does not eminently contain extension within himself and
therefore cannot create it” (DG 31). Newton is using Descartes’ own no-
torious causal principle against him: “whatever perfection or reality there is
in a thing is present either formally or eminently in its first and adequate
cause” (AT 7, 165). The Cartesian God cannot be the first and adequate
cause of matter since he contains extension neither formally nor eminently.
Note that this objection presupposes a rather strong notion of eminent
containment. On some models, such as Aquinas’s, for S to contain p emi-
nently requires only that S have the power to produce p.43 But complete
40 Immortality of the Soul, Axiome XIV; 1987, 37.

41 Immortality of the Soul, ch. 6; 1987, 39. See also the later Enchiridium Metaphysicum:
“the divine amplitude or quantity […] contains all other quantity virtually or emi-
nently” (ch. 2; 1995, 17).
42 Rather than assert that space is produced by God, other writers known to Newton
(such as Barrow and Gassendi) avoid the implication that there is something real and
independent of God by denying the full reality of space (and its capacities). See
further the beginning of section 3 below. I will argue that Newton avoids the same
problem by making space and time real, uncreated attributes of God himself.
43 Aquinas, ST Ia, 4, art. 2; 1964–1981, vol. 2, 52: “First, because whatever perfection
exists in an effect must be found in the effective cause: either in the same formality, if it
is a univocal agent – as when man reproduces man; or in a more eminent way, if it is an
equivocal agent – thus in the sun is the likeness of whatever is generated by the sun’s
power […]. Since therefore God is the first effective cause of things, the perfections of

dualism rules out eminent containment of corporeal effects, and hence di-
vine causality itself, only if such containment is actual and not merely vir-
tual. For allowing God the power to produce body or motion does not jeop-
ardize the Cartesian distinction between mind and body; but requiring God
to actually contain body or motion certainly does.44
On Newton’s own theory of creation, God merely endows various “deter-
minate quantities of extension” with three conditions: (1) mobility within
space; (2) mutual impenetrability; (3) the power to produce sensations in
minds and to be moved by minds. God further ensures that the designated
quantities move and collide “in accord with certain laws” (DG 28 f.). Since
such a favored portion of extension would be “similar in every way” to
bodies, Newton concludes: “we can hardly say that it is not body” (DG 27).
However strange this theory of creation, it seems to be consistent with the
strong version of the causal principle. For God merely delegates to space
certain powers to bring about our familiar perceptions and there is no
doubt that such powers are pre-contained in God: “it is certain that God
can stimulate our perceptions by means of his own will, and therefore affix
such powers to the effect of his will” (DG 28). It is evident from his own
treatment of finite mind-body causality that Newton fully embraces the
causal principle. To explain how, on his view, human minds can act on
bodies, but cannot create other minds, he observes that “created mind (since
it is in the image of God) is of a far more noble nature than body (naturae
longe nobilioris quam corpus) so that it may perhaps eminently contain
[body] within itself ” (DG 30).45 But presumably only God is sufficiently
all things must pre-exist in God in a more eminent way.” See also ST 1a, 105, art.1;
1964–1998, vol. 14, 58–60; Suarez, MD 30, 1, 10; 1965, vol. 2, 63; 1998, 34; Goclenius
1613, 146 f. Cf. More: “the divine goodness contains all created goodness virtually or
eminently” (Enchiridium Metaphysicum, ch. 2; 1995, 17 f.).
44 Descartes invokes his causal containment principle most famously in the Third Medi-
tation: “A stone, for example, which previously did not exist, cannot begin to exist un-
less produced by something which contains, either formally or eminently, everything
to be found in the stone” (AT 7, 40; see also The Principles of Philosophy, AT 8A, 11).
Descartes himself seems to understand eminent containment in a realist fashion since
his causal principle depends on the notion that causation involves an actual giving or
transference of reality from cause to effect: “For where could the effect get its reality
from if not from the cause? And how could the cause give it to the effect unless it pos-
sessed it?” (AT 7, 40) See further Gorham 2003. For recent non-realist accounts of
eminent containment, see O’Neill 1987, Vinci 1998, and Schmaltz 2008.
45 Although the notion of eminent containment is already found in scholastic authors
like Aquinas and Suarez, it seems likely that Newton’s source is Descartes. For, as
McGuire and Tamny have documented, Newton’s early interest in the concept is evi-
dent in notes he took on Descartes as a student: “an idea, by how much the more per-
fect, so much the more perfect must its cause be, whether it be the object or thing that
eminently contains it, or another idea” (Newton 1983, 462). Furthermore, as I have
argued, Newton relies on a much more robust version of the principle than is found in
scholastics such as Aquinas. For detailed discussion see Gorham 2011.

noble to contain and therefore create other minds. In any event, Newton
shares Descartes’ view that containment (either formal or eminent) is
necessary for causality.
But such a view of causality seems inconsistent with Causation.46 If New-
ton’s God caused space then he would have to really contain extension.
Given the necessary distinction between cause and effect, there would then
need to be two real spaces: one in God and one in the world. As indicated
above, More embraces this consequence of Causation. But for Newton it is
quite clear that there is only one space, shared by God, finite minds and
bodies: “No being exists or can exist that is not related to space in some way.
God is everywhere, created minds are somewhere and body is in the space
that it occupies” (DG 25).
A final remark against Causation: it is simply hard to grasp what it could
mean to produce or emanate time and space. In the Aristotelian tradition,
because time and space are dependent, respectively, on motion and body,
God could be said to produce time and space by producing a world in mo-
tion. But De Gravitatione marks a decisive departure from this tradition.
For Newton space and duration are merely “affections or attributes accord-
ing to which the quantity of any thing’s existence is individuated” (DG 25).
By producing infinite space and time God would be generating his own
quantity of existence. Newton himself seems to recognize the strangeness of
this idea, remarking that if space were not eternal “then he either created
space later (where he was not present) or else, which is no less repugnant to
reason, he created his own ubiquity” (DG 26).47 Even if we could manage to
frame a genuine distinction between God’s existence and space and time,
there would remain a familiar theological problem. Newton strongly sug-
gests that space and time exist necessarily: “we cannot think that space does
not exist just as we cannot think there is no duration” (DG 26). So if space
and time and God were distinct, as Causation requires, there would be more
than one necessary being.48 But on the view I will now defend, Assimilation,
this problem is entirely avoided because space and time become attributes
of God, i.e. ways of conceiving his very existence.49
46 Slowik (forthcoming) mentions the role of eminent containment in Newton’s causal

theory, but he sees it primarily as a difficulty for Stein’s Independence position. If I am
right, it raises problems that are at least as serious for Causation.
47 See also ‘Tempus et Locus’: “Time and Place are common affections of all things with-
out which nothing whatsoever can exist. All things are in time as regards duration of
existence and in place as regards amplitude of presence. And what is never or nowhere
is not in rerum natura” (McGuire 1978b, 117).
48 For a helpful discussion of the sense in which space can be necessary yet still depend-
ent on God, see Janiak 2008, 147–149. Since for Janiak space is dependent on God,
but on nothing else, he calls his view ‘weak absolutism’ (2008, 152). On the modal
status of absolute space see also McGuire 1990, 106, and Carriero 1990, 113–115.
49 For additional reasons to doubt the Causation model, especially as developed by Car-
riero 1990, see Janiak 2008, 144–148.

3. Space as a Cartesian generic attribute of God
I have so far argued that Newtonian space and time depend on God, but not
as an effect depends on its efficient cause. So what exactly are space and
time in Newton’s ontology? He says that space is neither an accident nor
a substance, but rather an “affection of being just as a being (entis quatenus
ens affectio)” (DG 25). ‘Affection’ was often used interchangeably with
‘accident’ or ‘mode’ (e.g. by More and Locke) to signify a specific and vari-
able property of a thing, such as its weight.50 Not all things have weight and
those that do can become heavier or lighter. But Newton considers space
and time to be universal (‘of being’) and essential (‘just as a being’) affec-
tions of existing things. They are, as he puts it in a later work, “common af-
fections (affectiones communes) of all things without which nothing what-
soever can exist”.51 This notion of affection can be better understood if
we note that in the section of De Gravitatione explaining the nature of
space and time as emanative effects he explicitly equates ‘affection’ with
‘attribute’: “certainly both are affections or attributes (affectiones sive
attributa)” (DG 25). ‘Attribute’ is a term of art employed by numerous phi-
losophers, to whom Newton is sympathetic (notably More) and to whom he
would certainly have been antipathetic (notably Spinoza), to denote essen-
tial or defining features of substances, especially God.52
Indeed, More has frequently been identified by proponents of Assimi-
lation as the major source for Newton’s views since More closely associates
his own conception of incorporeal space with God, at least in his latest writ-
ings.53 In the Appendix to the Antidote Against Atheism, for example, he
writes that space “must of necessity be a substance incorporeal necessarily
and eternally existent of itself; which the clearer idea of a Being absolutely
perfect will more fully and punctually inform us to be the self-subsisting
50 More, Immortality of the Soul, Bk. I, ch. 8, sec. 9; 1987, 48; Locke, Essay, Bk. II,
ch. 12, sec. 4; 1975, 165. See also: Goclenius, Lexicon Philosophicum: “An affection is
a way something is affected; the disposition of something; the accident of a subject”
(1613, 79); Ephraim Chambers, Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: “A quality
or property of some natural being” (1728, 42); and The New and Complete American
Encyclopedia: “Affection, in a philosophical sense, implies an attribute inseparable
from its subject. Thus magnitude, figure, weight, etc. are affections of all bodies”
(1805, 162).
51 ‘Tempus et Locus’; McGuire 1978b, 117.
52 For example, More: “Of the indiscerpibility of a spirit we have already given rational
grounds to evince it not impossible, it being an immediate attribute thereof, as impen-
etrability is of a body” (Immortality of the Soul, Bk. I, ch. 5, sec. 2; 1987, 34); Spinoza:
“By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting
its essence” (Ethics, Part I, Def. 4; 1994, 85). Although Spinoza is mentioned in the
Clarke-Leibniz correspondence, Newton probably never read the infamous pantheist
(see further note 129 below).
53 Burtt 1952, 257 f.; Koyré 1957, chs. vi and ix, and 1965, 89 f.; Grant 1981, 245; Hall
1992, 270–272.

God”.54 However, Newton expressly states that space is a not a substance

since it is not “absolute in itself but as it were an emanative effect of God”
(DG 21). For More the only alternative to making space a substance is to
make it an accident of God since he enthusiastically embraces “that excel-
lent division of Being into substance and accident”.55 Yet Newton also
denies that space and time “exist as an accident inhering in some subject”
(DG 22). So Newtonian space and time cannot be attributes of God in
whatever sense More entertains. Indeed, More himself seems vaguely con-
scious of the inadequacy of his metaphysical framework to capture God’s
relation to space and time.56 For he sometimes characterizes space and
time as merely “confused” or “adulterated” “representations of the divine
eternity and immensity”.57 More’s struggle to accommodate space and time
as “representations” of God hint at Newton’s own Cartesian solution to
the problem. For, as we shall see shortly, Cartesian generic attributes are
neither substances nor accidents, but rather ‘manners of thinking’ about the
existence of all things, including God.
Before considering other possible philosophical sources for Newton’s
divine ontology of space and time, it is worth mentioning that previous
commentators have noted that Newtonian affections function like divine
attributes, although without exploring the implications of this view or trac-
ing its Cartesian origin.58 For example, McGuire maintains that Newtonian
“space and duration are ‘common affections’ of God’s quantity of exist-
ence”.59 But in this same article McGuire conceives of space and time
as somehow the effects of God, and distinct from God himself. Carriero
suggests that Newton conceives existence, and by extension spatial and
temporal ‘locatability’, as transcendental predicates or common affections,
i.e. “general conditions of a thing’s being”.60 However, he puzzlingly distin-
guishes between these common affections (locatability) and space and time
themselves, with the latter emanating from the former (see note 105 below).
54 More, Antidote Against Atheism, Appendix, ch. 7; 1997, 338.

55 More, Enchiridium Metaphysicum, ch. 1; 1995, 11.
56 For a judicious comparison of the different conceptions of divine space in More vs.
Newton, see Power 1970. Reid 2007 provides an interesting account of the develop-
ment of More’s conception of divine space. For a book-length overview of More’s
science and philosophy, see Hall 1990.
57 More Enchiridium Metaphysicum ch. 8; 1995, 68. See also Antidote Against Atheism:
“this infinite Amplitude and Mensurability, which we cannot disimagine in our fancie
but will necessarily be, may be a more rude and obscure Notion offered to our minde
of that necessary and self-existent Essence which the Idea of God does with greater
fullness and distinctness represent to us.” (Appendix, ch. 7; 1997, 335)
58 Koyré 1957, 302 n. 15; Koyré and Cohen 1962, 93.
59 McGuire 1978a, 4. Similarly, in a later paper McGuire characterizes God’s immensity
and eternity as ‘transcendental features’, which are not properties or qualities of God,
but “refer, rather, to the manner of God’s existence” (1990, 101–112).
60 Carriero 1990, 126.

My view is that McGuire and Carriero are (nearly) right to think about
God’s immensity and eternity as common affections or transcendental
predicates. Where they both err is in keeping space and time somehow dis-
tinct from God himself. As we will see, by following Descartes’ lead in ana-
lyzing duration as merely a way of conceiving the first being itself, Newton
feels no need to impose such a distinction.
Pierre Gassendi’s philosophy, especially as channeled through its English
promulgator Walter Charleton, is another important influence on Newton’s
conceptions of space and time.61 Newton owned and studied Charleton’s
Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana, a virtual paraphrase of Gas-
sendi’s physical and metaphysical writings. Following Gassendi, Charleton
argued that space and time are infinite and eternal beings that exist inde-
pendently of matter and motion. Moreover, unlike More, they concluded
that space and time so conceived transcend the traditional division of being
into substance and accident: “To those two members of the division there
ought to be superadded another two, more general than those, viz. Space
and Time”.62 But however significant the part of Gassendi/Charleton in en-
couraging Newton’s absolutism, this influence does little to resolve the
vexed issue of God’s relation to absolute space and time in the Newtonian
scheme. For contrary to Newton (and More) they adopt the stance that
space and time are “independent upon the original of all things, God”.63
They attempt to deflect the anticipated charge of impiety arising from this
stance by observing that since space and time fall outside the substance/ac-
cident dichotomy they are “positively nothing real” (positivum nihil sunt).64
However, Newton cannot so easily side-step the issue of the relation of
space and time to the origin of all things since although space is not a sub-
stance or accident, “much less may it be said to be nothing since it is some-
thing more than accident and approaches much more closely the nature of a
substance” (DG 22). What is needed is a way of thinking of space and time
such that they approach the nature of substance while remaining absolutely
dependent on God.65
61 Westfall 1962 and 1980, 203 f.; McGuire 1978a, 7, 10, 14; Arthur 1995, 327–331, 333.
Hall 1992 prefers a pluralistic view of Newton’s influences.
62 Charleton 1654, 66; Gassendi 1964, vol. 1, 182.
63 Charleton 1654, 68; Gassendi 1964, vol. 1, 183. This is not to say they deny God the
traditional attributes of immensity and eternity. Rather they conceive of these as in-
volving extension and duration distinct from the space and time in which bodies exist:
“we conceive an infinity of as if extension (quasi extensionis), which we call immensity,
by which we hold that he is everywhere. But I say ‘as if ’ of extension, lest we imagine
that the divine substance were extended through space like bodies are” (Gassendi
1964, vol. 1, 191. Cf. Charleton 1654, 70).
64 Charleton 1654, 68; Gassendi 1964, vol. 1, 183. For a recent overview of Gassendi’s
views on space and time, see LoLordo 2007, ch. 5.
65 The influence of Isaac Barrow on Newton’s absolutism has also been persuasively ar-
gued by, for example, Richard Arthur 1995. See also Burtt 1952, ch. vi, sec. F; Jammer

Whatever the remote influence of More, Gassendi and Charleton on

Newton’s ontology of space and time, it is worth reminding ourselves that
Newton composed De Gravitatione with his thoroughly dog-eared edition
of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy at his elbow, frequently citing part
and section. He obviously made a close study of the work since throughout
De Gravitatione he employs Cartesian terms of art in their exact sense,
both in criticizing Descartes and in developing his own positions: ‘clear and
distinct’66, ‘general extension’, mind-body ‘union’ and, as we have already
seen, ‘eminent containment’.67 I propose that this study is the proximate
source for Newton’s model of God’s relation to space and time in De Gravi-
tatione. In particular, Newton conceives of this relation in precisely the way
Descartes articulates the relation between all substances and their ‘most
general’ attributes.
In Part I, Section 48 of the Principles, having established the existence
of himself and of God, and thereby the certainty of his clear and distinct
perceptions, Descartes proceeds to divide the “basic components of our
thoughts” into two groups: First, those whose objects are regarded as
things or affections of things, and second, the eternal truths, which do not
1954, 69–72; Strong 1970; Whitrow 1980, 186; Hall 1992. Arthur emphasizes the
method of fluxions as a source for ‘equably flowing’ time and does not discuss in de-
tail God’s ontological relation to space and time. This is understandable since Barrow
himself, although he was a theologian, does not explore the issue in any depth. The
reason is that Barrow, like Gassendi and Charleton, does not endow space and time
with intrinsic or positive reality: “Time does not denote an actual existence but
only the capacity or possibility for persistence, just as Space denotes the capacity for a
magnitude within it” (Barrow 1860, 161; Čapek 1976, 204). Falling in with the long
medieval tradition of ‘imaginary’ space and time (see Grant 1981, chs. 6 and 7) Bar-
row’s absolutes are not real beings but potential sites for the future or counterfactual
exercise of God’s power. As such, the thorny question of their ontological relation to
God does not arise in so pressing a way for Barrow as for Newton.
66 This phrase was common by the late seventeenth century, but Newton seems to have
Descartes in mind when he uses it in De Gravitatione since he is then contrasting his
‘uncertain’ theory of body with Descartes’ a priori analysis: “as I have no clear and
distinct perception of this matter I should not dare to affirm the contrary” (DG 27).
67 Newton’s study of Descartes’ Principles and other works dates at least to his under-
graduate days in the mid 1660’s, when he studied the 1656 Amsterdam (Elzevir) edi-
tion of Descartes’ Opera. For a thorough review of Newton’s early study and analysis
of Descartes, see McGuire and Tamny 1983, ch. 2. See also Harrison 1978, 131 f. – al-
though McGuire and Tamny (1983, 23) note that Harrison incorrectly lists an edition
of Descartes’ Principles, rather than the 1656 Opera, as the text Newton consulted –,
and Westfall 1962. Stein 1967 and Koyré 1965, ch. III, offer detailed discussions of the
relation between the physics of Descartes and Newton, including their respective con-
ceptions of space and time. Recently, McGuire (2007) has argued convincingly that
Newton’s acceptance of the actual infinity of space and time is grounded on a Platonic
conception of true and immutable natures derived from Descartes (see also McGuire
and Tamny 1983, ch. 2). However, none of these studies mention the importance of
Cartesian generic attributes in Newton’s theology of space and time.

exist outside our thought (AT 8A, 22).68 The most general concepts of
things or affections are substance, duration, order, number and existence
“since these extend to all classes of things” (AT 8A, 23).69 He then subdi-
vides the class of all things/affections into the exclusive and exhaustive
categories of thinking and extended things, each with their peculiar modes.
So, things outside our mind may be either thinking or extended, but they
are all existing and enduring substances of a certain number, ordered in a
certain way. Thought and extension, which constitute the essences of things,
he calls “principal attributes”. The concepts that apply indiscriminately to
all external things I will call ‘generic attributes’.70 Of course, Descartes is
primarily concerned with the two principal attributes. Nevertheless, he also
presents a detailed analysis of the generic attributes, which reveals the fol-
lowing characteristics:
(1) Generic attributes pertain to existing objects rather than notions. Ge-
neric attributes are in the class of things or affections rather than objects
not outside our thought. Thus, although an eternal truth like ‘Nothing
comes from nothing’ “is regarded not as a really existing thing” (AT 8A,
23), Descartes asserts in Principles I, 55 that “we should not regard order or
number as anything separate from the things which are ordered or num-
bered” (AT 8A, 26). He explains in the next section that although there is a
sense in which we can abstract duration and number from things, and treat
them as universals apart from created things (AT 8A, 27), strictly speaking
duration and number are extra-conceptual ways of being.
(2) Generic attributes are common to all things. The generic attributes
are affections of all things outside our thought. Unlike qualities, which
Descartes says allow something to be designated “as a substance of such
and such a kind”, attributes merely pick out “in a more general way what is
in the being of a substance (substantiae inesse)” (AT 8A, 26). They are ways
of being common to all things simply insofar as they exist.71
68 In their inventory of the dog-earings in Newton’s copy of Descartes’ Principles,

McGuire and Tamny note that Article 48 is among those specifically flagged by New-
ton, along with other articles dealing with Cartesian issues specifically addressed in
De Gravitatione, such as eminent containment and the distinction between indefinite
and infinite extension (McGuire and Tamny 1983, 141).
69 Existence is not mentioned in the original list of generic attributes, but is introduced
soon after in Principles I, 56 (AT 8A, 26).
70 In this usage I follow Nolan (1997). Schiffer (1997, 66) refers to Descartes’ generic at-
tributes using the scholastic term “transcendental properties” though Descartes him-
self does not use this label.
71 See also Rules for the Direction of the Mind: “Those simples are to be termed ‘com-
mon’ which are ascribed indifferently now to incorporeal things, now to spirits – for
instance, existence, unity, duration and the like” (AT 10, 419). In his 1990 paper
McGuire suggests that Newtonian “common affections” – as Newton refers to them
in ‘Tempus et Locus’ (McGuire 1978b, 117) – are ‘external’ since they “are not specific
to any particular sort or kind” (McGuire 1990, 103). Carriero complains that this

(3) Generic attributes are unchanging. In Principles I, 56, Descartes says

we employ the term mode “when we are thinking of a substance as being
affected or modified” (AT 8A, 26). But attributes admit no variation: “that
which remains unmodified – for example existence or duration in a thing
which exists and endures – should be called not a quality or a mode but an
attribute” (AT 8A, 26). An enduring thing may undergo various changes,
but its mere existence and duration cannot change: either it exists and en-
dures or it does not. Consequently, in immutable God there are no modes,
but only attributes.
(4) Generic attributes are neither substance nor mode. Generic attributes
are not modes. But Descartes also warns that we must not “mistakenly
tack on to them any concept of substance” (AT 8A, 26). Order and
number, for example, are not “anything separate” from things, but simply
“modes under which we consider things (tantum modos sub quibus illus con-
sideramus)” (AT 8A, 26). This is not to say that attributes are subjective or
ideal, or modes in the strict sense of changeable accidents. As he explains
in Principles I, 57, it is true that when ‘time’ is called the “measure of mo-
tion” it is merely in our thought; but ‘duration’ is in things themselves since
“the duration which we understand to be in movement is certainly no dif-
ferent from the duration which we find to be in things that do not move”
(AT 8A, 27). The point of designating attributes as ‘modes under which we
consider things’ is that they are neither accidental features of things, nor
things in their own right, but one of the ways in which things exist. Du-
ration does not ‘inhere’ in things anymore than a certain chemical or physi-
cal structure inheres in a given protein. Rather duration and number are
different ways of regarding all persisting things, just as chemistry and
physics provide different ways of thinking about certain natural processes,
or ‘best friend’ and ‘mayor’ could be distinct ways of considering one and
the same person.72
“fails to address the crucial issue here as to whether these ‘external affections’ are to
be considered ontologically external – that is whether such affections were to be
understood to be really distinct from the substance and accidents of the thing to which
the affections belong” (Carriero 1990, 120). On my view, space is ontologically inter-
nal to God since only God has infinite space as attribute. So space is not really distinct
from God. Yet this does not prevent it from being common to all things in the sense
that all things are in space. However, space is external to these things in the sense that
it could exist without them, but not vice-versa. That is, bodies are modally distinct
from space. (See further section 4, part ii below.)
72 Descartes is clearer on this point in a letter to an unknown recipient: “I make a dis-
tinction between modes strictly so called, and attributes, without which the thing of
which they are attributes cannot be; or between the modes of things themselves and
the modes of thinking” (AT 4, 348 f.). For a helpful clarification of Descartes’ confus-
ing terminology regarding attributes, see Nolan 1997. On Descartes’ subtle views on
the relations among duration, time, motion and the soul, see Gorham 2007.

(5) Generic attributes are merely conceptually distinct from substances

and from one another. Generic attributes are not ‘separable’ or really distinct
from substances, nor from one another, but merely conceptually distinct.
That is (Principles I, 62): we are unable “to form a clear and distinct con-
ception of a substance if we exclude from it the attribute in question” or
“to perceive the idea of one of two attributes if we separate it from the
other” (AT 8A, 30). For example, “since a substance cannot cease to endure
without also ceasing to be, the distinction between the substance and its du-
ration is merely a conceptual one” (AT 8A, 30).
(6) Generic attributes do not in themselves affect us. We do not become
aware of a thing simply by virtue of its existence “since this alone does not
have any effect on us” (AT 8A, 25). Rather we learn of an existing thing
through its modes and qualities. The same goes for the other generic at-
tributes. A thing does not affect me merely by its duration or number, but by
its shape or motions.
In all of these ways, Newtonian space and time, as affections of God, are
identical to Cartesian generic attributes. First, like Cartesian duration,
space and time pertain to existing things rather than concepts or essences.
Thus, Newton emphasizes that space and duration are at bottom ways of
individuating “the quantity of a thing’s existence” (DG 25). In the special
case of God, these quantities are infinite. In McGuire’s apt phrase, space
and time are “predicates of pure existence”.73 Second, space and time are
common to all existing things: “No being exists or can exist which is not re-
lated to space in some way […]. And the same may be asserted of duration”
(DG 25).74 Third, space and time are unchanging. Space is “immutable in
nature” because it is an emanative effect of immutable God (DG 26) and the
same is presumably true of duration. Moreover, the parts of space and du-
ration are individuated only by their mutual order and positions “which
consequently cannot be altered” (DG 25).75
Fourth, space and time are neither substance nor mode. Space is not
a mode because “it does not exist as an accident inhering in some subject”.
In particular it does not inhere in body: “we cannot believe it would
perish if God should annihilate a body” (DG 22). Newton recognizes, like
73 McGuire 1990.
74 So Janiak (2008, 142 f.) is right to emphasize that space is not restricted to any par-
ticular thing or kind of thing. It does not follow, however, that any thing at all ensures
infinite “space alone”; for that, only God suffices, as argued in section 2 above.
75 See also ‘Tempus et Locus’: “Neither does place argue for the divisibility of a thing
or the multitude of its parts, and on that account imperfection, since space itself has
no parts which can be separated from one another” (McGuire 1978b, 117); Principia
scholium on space and time: “Just as the order of the parts of time is unchangeable,
so too, is the order of the parts of space. Let the parts of space move from their places,
and they will move (so to speak) from themselves” (Newton 1999, 410). For a philo-
sophical analysis of Newton’s argument, see Nerlich 2005.

Descartes, that we are tempted to categorize space and duration as sub-

stances since “it is something more than an accident and approaches more
nearly the nature of substance” (DG 22). But we should resist this temp-
tation. Although space does not inhere in things, it does not qualify as sub-
stance because it does not exist apart from God: “it is not absolute in itself
but is as it were an emanative effect of God” (DG 21). “Something more”
than mere modes, yet not full-blown substances, infinite space and time are
rather two essential ways in which God exists. Just as Cartesian duration is
a way of conceiving any substance in so far as it persists, Newtonian space
and time are ways of conceiving God’s infinite existence: “the quantity of
existence of God is eternal in relation to duration and infinite in relation to
the space in which he is present” (DG 25).76
Fifth, and perhaps most significantly, Newtonian space and time seem
to be merely conceptually distinct from God.77 In Cartesian terms,
a merely conceptual (as opposed to real or modal) distinction is indicated
by our “inability to form a clear and distinct idea of the substance if we ex-
clude from it the attribute in question” (AT 8A, 30). According to Newton,
to conceive of God apart from space is to suppose God could be
“nowhere”; but this is “repugnant to reason” both because God could not
produce or precede his own ubiquity and because “whatever is neither
everywhere nor anywhere does not exist” (DG 25). Sixth, and finally, like
the Cartesian attribute of mere existence, and unlike Newtonian body,
space is “not mobile in the least nor capable of inducing change of motion
in bodies or change of thought in the mind” (DG 33). So we do not perceive
space in itself by the senses. Certainly space contains innumerable real fig-
ures, but we do not perceive these except via a “corporeal representation”
as when a dye is introduced into perfectly transparent water (DG 23).78
76 So Edward Grant’s concern (1981, 245) that in holding that space is an attribute of
God, yet neither substance not accident, Newton has “implicitly contradicted him-
self ” is unwarranted. Newtonian space is a generic attribute: neither a mere mode nor
a substance per se.
77 Janiak has recently noted Sean Greenberg’s suggestion that the relation between New-
ton’s God and space might be captured by “Descartes’ notion of a distinction of rea-
son” (2008, 154 n. 43). But Janiak did not pursue the connection to Descartes.
78 To be clear, my thesis is that Newton’s God is to Newtonian space and time as all
Cartesian substances are to their generic attributes (such as duration and number).
I do not maintain that space and time are generic attributes of God for Descartes,
who denies of course that God is spatial or extended in any strict sense (AT 5, 269 f.).
Although Descartes’ God endures, like any substance, it is less clear what sort of
duration he has. For discussion, see Gorham 2008. On the natures of space and ex-
tension themselves, as well as motion, De Gravitatione is of course profoundly
anti-Cartesian. Newton also rejects the Cartesian doctrine that extension is merely
indefinite rather than infinite (DG 24 f.). Nor do I maintain that space and time are
generic attributes, i.e. ways of conceiving, finite Newtonian substances. Because he
thinks there is merely a conceptual distinction between a substance and its duration,
Descartes insists that it “involves a contradiction to conceive of any duration inter-

Collectively, these parallels suggest a Cartesian source for Newton’s

conceptualization of divine space and time, especially when we consider
that Newton was studying the relevant texts of Descartes closely while
composing De Gravitatione, a work that shows independent traces of Car-
tesian influence.79
However, if Newton’s view is that space and time are generic attributes
of God – not his effects, but ways of thinking about God himself – what
accounts for Newton’s repeated reference to space and time as ‘emanative
effects’ of God? On my reading, if God is the cause of space and time then
it follows he is partially self-caused. In fact Newton discusses a sense in
which God is causa sui, a sense deriving once again from his careful study
of Descartes. In an early notebook, Newton comments on some passages
from the First and Fourth Replies in Descartes’ Meditations. One of
the main issues in these replies is whether God is causa sui. After initially
suggesting that God is the efficient cause of his own continuance (AT 7,
110), Descartes eventually settles on the more cautious position that God
is a sort of formal cause of himself since the “immensity of his power or
essence” means he does not need a preserver (AT 7, 236 f.). So “the answer
to the question why God exists should be given not in terms of an efficient
cause in the strict sense, but strictly in terms of the essence or formal cause
of the thing” (AT 7, 243). Referring to these passages in his notebook,
Newton seems to endorse their conclusions: “A necessary being is the
cause of itself, or its existence, after the same manner that a mountain is the
cause of a valley or a triangle is the cause that its three angles are equal to
two right ones”.80 If Newton is prepared to admit that a triangle, by virtue
of its essence, can be called the formal cause of its necessary properties,
vening between the destruction of an earlier world and the creation of a new one”
(AT 5, 343). In contrast, Newton says “we cannot think there is no duration, even
though it would be possible to assert that nothing whatever endures” (DG 26).
Obviously, Descartes and Newton do not make space and duration generic attributes
of the same things; but for both the ontological category of generic attribute is never-
theless crucial. And along with the notion of generic attributes, De Gravitatione
retains at least two other deeply Cartesian elements. First, as we have seen, Newton
relies on the Cartesian principle that efficient causes must at least eminently contain
their effects. Second, the system of De Gravitatione is dualist since, as we will see
below, a Newtonian mind, unlike a body, “can be diffused through space without any
concept of its parts” (DG 26). This is reminiscent of Descartes’ crucial distinction
“between the mind and the body inasmuch as body is by its very nature divisible while
the mind is utterly indivisible” (AT 7, 85).
79 So I do not maintain that Descartes is the only possible source for each of these
aspects of Newton’s view. As a referee of this paper has pointed out, it is a scholastic
commonplace that mere existence or duration are not causes (6). Rather, I maintain
that a Cartesian origin is the best explanation for the overall similarity between the
conceptual frameworks each employs.
80 Newton 1983, 463.

then he can also admit that space and time as divine attributes are ‘ema-
native effects’ of God’s infinite nature.81 But this is a far cry from Morean
emanation.
4. Objections and replies
To say that space and time are not absolute in themselves “but as it were
an emanative effect of God” (DG 21) is simply to say that that space and
time are generic attributes, i.e. “modes under which we conceive of ” God
(AT 8A, 26) insofar as he is present and persistent. In what follows I con-
sider a number of objections to this reading, most drawing out surprising
implications.
(i) God becomes divisible. Newton addresses this objection himself, first
by noting that space is “not actually divisible” (DG 25). By this he means
that the parts of space cannot be separated, which follows from their prin-
ciple of individuation as discussed above. He finds it even clearer that “the
parts of duration are individuated by their order” (DG 24). So God cannot
be broken apart even if space and time are his attributes. Newton further
notes that each being has “a manner proper to itself of being present in
space” (DG 25). Just as the same moment of duration can exist at different
places, the same mind “can be diffused throughout space without any con-
cept of its parts” (DG 26). The force of the analogy is admittedly somewhat
elusive. But Newton’s point seems to be that even if a moment or a mind
is spatially extended, it need not for that reason have temporal or mental
parts. This would explain why Newton does not deny outright that minds
have spatial parts. Rather he says that we understand how they are diffused
through space without any “concept” of their parts (sine aliquo partium con-
81 Schliesser (forthcoming) proposes a formal-causal model of Newtonian emanation

that derives from Bacon rather than Descartes. Bacon characterizes the “source of
emanation” of natural things as “nature-engendering nature”. What gives things their
distinct natures, Bacon argues, are the “fixed laws” and in this sense it can still be said
that science aims to identify “formal” causes (Bacon, New Organon, 2, I–II; 2000,
102f.). Schliesser finds support for this formal model of emanation in Newton’s theory
of matter, which emphasizes a distinction between God’s will and the “formal reason”
of bodies (DG 29, 31). As Schliesser points out, Newton explains the power of bodies
so conceived in terms of their law-like effects. However, while this presents an interest-
ing model for the causal power of bodies, it is unclear whether it can be extended to
the emanation of space. Space and bodies are very different sorts of effects according
to De Gravitatione: the former is necessary, eternal, uncreated, imperceptible, infinite,
indivisible, immobile and causally inert while the latter are, as Newton says, “opposite
in every respect” (DG 33). Indeed, laws are only mentioned in De Gravitatione after
the account of space has been completed and the more ‘uncertain’ account of body is
introduced.

ceptu).82 The distinction between divisibility qua spatial and qua mental is
re-enlisted in the General Scholium:
There are parts that are successive in duration and coexistent in space but neither of
these exist in the person of man or his thinking principle, and much less in the thinking
substance of God. Every man, in so far as he is a thing that has senses, is one and the
same man throughout his lifetime in each and every organ of his senses.83
The important thing for Assimilation is that Newton’s efforts to protect

God from division, whether or not they are successful, presuppose that God
is genuinely extended, something not implied by Independence or Cau-
sation.
(ii) God becomes passive. If space and time are divine attributes, then
God is causally inert in these respects (DG 21), contrary to traditional
theology and to Newton’s voluntarism in particular.84 In response, it should
be noted first that the inactivity of space and time does not imply that God
is passive in the sense of being affected or changed. It is impossible to move
or divide space or time (DG 25). This is consistent with Descartes’ observa-
tion that the generic attributes “remain unmodified” (AT 8A, 26). Fur-
thermore, the passivity implied by Assimilation actually explains an other-
wise puzzling reference to God’s inactivity in the General Scholium: “In
him all things are contained and move but he does not act on them nor they
on him […] bodies feel nothing from God’s omnipresence”.85 Because space
is inert, so is God’s omnipresence. Finally, there is an important sense in
which space and time, while inactive in themselves, facilitate God’s activity.
This comes out most clearly in later works such as the Queries to the
Opticks: “being in all places”, God is able to “move the bodies within this
boundless uniform sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the parts of
the universe”.86 So while God’s immensity and eternity are not his actions,
they are necessary conditions for his omnipotence. This is in line with the
traditional conception of immensity: “God is in all things; not, indeed, as
part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that
upon which it works”.87
(iii) Space and time converge. If space and time are each merely concep-
tually distinct from God, as the Cartesian reading implies, it seems to follow
82 Similarly, in ‘Tempus et Locus’, one of the reasons God is not made imperfect by
being temporal is that: “the duration of each thing flows but its enduring substance
does not flow, and is not changed with respect to before and after, but always remains
the same” (McGuire 1978b, 117).
83 Newton 1999, 941.
84 I thank a referee for Archiv for raising this objection.
85 Newton 1999, 941 f.
86 Newton 2004, 138.
87 Aquinas, ST 1a, 8, art.1; 1964–1981, vol. 2, 110.

that space and time are merely conceptually distinct from one another.88
Descartes himself affirms the merely conceptual distinction amongst the
generic attributes of a thing (AT 8A, 30). This consequence is reinforced in
the present context since the unity of the divine attributes is a theological
commonplace.89 For Descartes, if two attributes are merely conceptually
distinct then we cannot clearly conceive one apart from the other. For
example, we cannot clearly conceive the existence of a thing apart from its
duration or the extension of a body apart from its divisibility (AT 9B, 53).
So on my Cartesian interpretation we have the surprising result that God’s
extension and duration, i.e. space and time themselves, are not really dis-
tinct and cannot be clearly conceived apart.
However surprising, it would not follow from this that the Newtonian
concepts of space and time are identical. Clearly, the concept of time in-
volves fewer dimensions than space, for example, along with the notion of a
‘flow’ (fluens).90 For Descartes says we consider a thing “in one way when
we consider it in abstraction from whether it exists or not, and in another
way when we consider it as existing” (AT 4, 349). We can think about a sub-
stance in abstraction from its duration or existence, for example, “but the
thing cannot be outside our thought without its existence or without its du-
ration” (AT 4, 349). This indicates merely a distinction in our conceptions,
however legitimate, not in things, i.e. a “formal distinction” as he some-
times puts it, following Scotus (AT 4, 349; AT 7, 120).91
My account does imply, however, that space and time are mutually insep-
arable outside our thought. This is confirmed by De Gravitatione which
indicates that we cannot clearly conceive Newtonian space existing if we
exclude time from this conception (and vice versa). Newton asserts that
“no being exists or can exist” which is not related to space and that “the
same may be asserted of duration” (DG 25). Furthermore, if we posit an
88 Thanks to Noa Shein for this objection.

89 It is unclear, however, whether this commonplace is accepted by Newton. In De Gravi-
tatione he says that we must conceive of God’s power to create bodies “as involving his
other attributes” (DG 33). This could mean simply that his creation of bodies is
guided by his wisdom, benevolence, etc., and occurs in his space and time. Indeed, in
the General Scholium, Newton seems to separate the attributes: “from true lordship it
follows that the true god is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections
[eternity, infinity, perfection] that he is supreme or supremely perfect” (Newton 1999,
941). McGuire argues convincingly that God’s attribute of infinity is distinct from his
perfection (1978a, 16 f.).
90 Principia, scholium on space and time; Newton 1999, 408.
91 Similarly, in the First Replies Descartes says we can conceive separately things which
are formally but not really distinct, but only “by an abstraction of the intellect which
conceives the thing inadequately” (AT 7, 120). Thus, he says I can conceive justice or
mercy in abstraction from people, but not in a complete way. See Skirry 2004 and
2005, ch. 3, on Descartes’ understanding of the merely conceptual distinction, and its
roots in Scotist philosophy. For a lucid account of Descartes’ method for determining
whether a distinction is real, modal or merely conceptual, see Nolan 1997.

empty space we posit something real: “Although space may be emptied of

body, nevertheless it is not in itself a void, and something is there, because
spaces are there” (DG 27). It follows that this ‘something’ must be related
to duration: space itself must endure. Indeed, Newton identifies “eternal”
as among the traits distinguishing space from body (DG 27) a trait space
enjoys precisely because it emanates from God (DG 26).
A corresponding argument would establish that any period of time must
be related to space. This is confirmed indirectly by the analogy, mentioned
in the reply to objection (i), between mental and temporal presence: “just as
we understand any moment of duration to be diffused throughout space
[…] mind also, according to its kind, can be diffused throughout space”
(DG 26). Newton assumes that time is by nature everywhere (“throughout
all the heavens”) just as space is necessarily eternal. As he puts it in the later
General Scholium: “each and every particle of space is always, and each and
every moment of duration is everywhere”.92 This co-dependence of space
and duration is not surprising if space and duration are inseparable
attributes of God. It may also explain why, both in De Gravitatione and the
Principia, Newton gives detailed arguments for absolute space, but no com-
parable arguments for absolute time.93 No further argument is needed if ab-
solute time is simply the eternal duration of absolute space. Charleton
dubbed time the ‘twin-brother’ of space;94 for Newton they are actually
joined at the hip.95
Although Newtonian space and time are affections of being, it does not
follow that they are attributes even of bodies. All bodies are in space, but
92 Newton 1999, 941. Cf. Locke: “expansion and duration do mutually embrace and
comprehend each other; every part of space being in every part of duration, and every
part of duration in every part of expansion” (Essay II, xv, 12; 1975, 204).
93 The dynamical and conceptual arguments for infinite ‘space alone’ are presented in
the first part of De Gravitatione. In the Principia, Newton provides the famous rotat-
ing bucket and attached globes arguments for positing motion relative to absolute
space (1999, 412–415). But, as Čapek observes, “he does not attempt anything of this
sort for absolute time” (1976, xvii). In his most detailed account of the close relation
of both space and time to God, Henry More remarks in passing that on his view “it is
seen to be of little wonder that the ideas of the two things existing so necessarily and
conjoined by an essential link should therefore be perceived by our minds necessarily
at the same time” (More, Enchiridium Metaphysicum, ch. 8; 1995, 69).
94 Charleton 1654, 75.
95 Stein (1967) suggests that we should speak of Newtonian ‘space-time’ rather than ab-
solute space and time in themselves since there is no way to fix the ‘absolute position’
(in absolute space) of a particle, only its ‘velocity difference’ (i.e. acceleration). But the
latter requires reference to time along with space. Still, as Stein acknowledges, New-
ton certainly considered the notions of absolute position and rest meaningful. Indeed,
he assumed the center of the world was in a state of absolute rest (Newton 1999, 816).
My claim, at any rate, is not that space and time are related because the notions of ab-
solute rest or space are empirically meaningless in themselves, but that we cannot con-
ceive a place except as enduring (or a moment except as ubiquitous).

they are more than conceptually distinct from space, since “we believe [ex-
tension] to exist wherever we imagine there are no bodies, we cannot believe
that it would perish with the body if God should annihilate a body”
(DG 22). Bodies necessarily occupy determinate quantities of extension,
but we can easily conceive of space and time apart from bodies. In Cartesian
terms, bodies are modally distinct from space and time and from one an-
other (AT 8A, 29).96 However, this leads to a fourth objection.
(iv) Bodies become modes of God. If bodies are quantities of space over
time, contingently endowed with mobility, impenetrability, and the power
to affect our senses, and space and time are divine attributes, then Newton
seems committed to the doctrine that bodies are modes of God. This is, in
fact, Newton’s view, at least under the ‘uncertain’ theory of body presented
in De Gravitatione. Indeed, Newton considers it an important virtue of this
theory that it deprives bodies of any substantial reality apart from God:
“God does not sustain his creatures any less than they sustain their acci-
dents” (DG 32). This confirms Assimilation since on the competing Cau-
sation view God does not sustain bodies as accidents of himself, but rather
as powers of the intermediaries that he emanates. While putting bodies in
their proper ontological place of full dependence on God, Assimilation still
allows a robust distinction between God and the world, “so long as we dis-
tinguish between the formal reason of bodies and the divine will” (DG 31).
To emphasize that bodies are not really things distinct from space, Newton
refers to the powers in space as the formal, rather than efficient reason for
bodies. So the relationship between space and body is more like traditional
hylomorphism: “extension takes the place of the substantial subject in
which the form of the body is conserved” (DG 29). His main point is that,
although “God himself directly informs space with body”, what he pro-
duces is distinct from his bare will as an effect from its cause. So although
bodies are indeed modes of the divine attribute of space, they are at the
same time products of the divine will.97 In this respect, he says, bodies differ
96 Here is an important disagreement with Descartes, incidentally. He regards duration

as merely conceptually distinct from even finite things since “a substance cannot cease
to endure without ceasing to be” (AT 8A, 30). One might have thought that this leaves
open the possibility that things are merely modally distinct from duration since modes
depend for their existence on their subjects, though not vice versa. But Descartes can-
not accept such a picture, for two reasons. Most importantly, he considers finite things
(at least finite minds) to be substances in their own right and so not dependent on
other things as modes. Second, he is less inclined than Newton to grant duration an
existence independent of the created world, which would allow it to be modally dis-
tinct from the things which endure: “it involves a contradiction to conceive of any du-
ration intervening between the destruction of an earlier world and the creation of a
new one” (AT 5, 343).
97 Newton’s conception of the relation of bodies to God is therefore very different from
Spinoza’s, for whom God has no will in the usual sense. I thank a referee for stressing
this point.

from God no less than on the Cartesian or Aristotelian conceptions of

body.98
(v) Newton expressly denies that God is space or time. He denies this in
the published General Scholium and (through Clarke) in the published cor-
respondence with Leibniz (see section 5 below), but not in the private trea-
tise De Gravitatione. The closest he comes in De Gravitatione is the assertion
that the “infinity of extension is only as perfect as that which is extended”
(DG 25) which seems to separate God’s perfection from the infinity of
space. But this remark entails only that space is not a perfect being on its
own. This is equally consistent with the view that extension is distinct from
God and the view that extension is one of God’s attributes.99 In the former
case, space is not perfect; in the latter case it is a perfection of God him-
self.100
So the assertion in the General Scholium that God “is not duration and
space”101 can plausibly mean that space and time are not God on their own.
Indeed the assertion follows an enumeration of the divine perfections (life,
intelligence, power, infinity and eternity) and the different ways they con-
tribute to God’s supreme divinity. The caveat that God is not simply his at-
tributes of space and time therefore coheres with the main lesson of the
paragraph, that God is not merely his infinite perfections, but also his do-
minion: “we do not say my eternal one […] we do not say my infinite one or
my perfect one”.102 This is confirmed by a similar discussion in the unpub-
lished manuscript ‘Tempus et Locus’, where Newton says “by reason of its
eternity and infinity space will neither be God nor wise nor powerful nor
alive”.103 Again, the point is not that infinite space and time are distinct
from God, or fail to qualify as divine attributes, but rather that they are not
98 Slowik rightly observes that given the hierarchical dependence of body on space, and
space on God, the Independence view that infinite space could emanate from finite
bodies is implausible: “since body is at (or near) the lowest rung in the hierarchy, and
therefore depends on the existence of incorporeal entities, space cannot be the ema-
native effect of matter/body” (forthcoming, 22).
99 Grant (1981, 243) interprets Newton’s way of dealing with Descartes’ worry in a simi-
lar fashion.
100 Carriero (1990, 128) rightly worries that on his account, according to which space and
time are real beings distinct from God, God is not self-sufficient, but rather depends
on space since “No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way”
(DG 26). If this problem is avoided by denying that God’s existence requires space, an-
other problem arises for Carriero: why would space emanate from God? As McGuire
observes: “there is no compelling reason why a necessary being (one who is eternity
itself and infinite presence itself) must necessarily generate space and time from the
necessity of its being” (1990, 106). This dilemma is avoided by Assimilation. Since
space and time are essential attributes of God himself, they are neither distinct from
God nor caused by him.
101 Newton 1999, 941.
102 Ibid.
103 ‘Tempus et Locus’; McGuire 1978b, 119.

the totality of God. Indeed, immediately following the remark about space
not being God just by reason of its eternity and infinity, Newton writes,
“God by reason of the eternity and infinity of his space (that is, by reason of
his eternal omnipresence) will be rendered the most perfect being”.104 Far
from separating space from God, Newton here identifies infinite space as
nothing other than his omnipresence.105
5. Other texts
Judging from his early notes, Newton was originally inclined on biblical
authority to the view that God created time.106 But in the first edition of the
Principia (1687) space and time have their “own nature without reference to
anything external”.107 While God is not mentioned in the first edition’s
scholium on space and time, Newton makes it clear in the (1713) General
Scholium that space and time depend on God: “He endures always and is
present everywhere and by existing always and everywhere he constitutes
duration and space”.108 Assimilation reads ‘constitutes’ in a metaphysical,
rather than an administrative sense.109 This seems to capture better the in-
tent of the passage. For Newton does not say that God produces space and
time, much less that he wills or appoints them; rather God constitutes space
and time just by existing. This is notable given the otherwise highly volun-
tarist tone of the paragraph: “He rules all things not as the world soul but
as the lord of all”.110 Space and time are not among the things he rules, but
104 Ibid.
105 In order to account for the claim that God is not space, while still preserving the tradi-
tional view that God is identical to his attributes, Carriero draws a distinction between
being ‘locatable’ in space and time, which is an affection of all things, and space and
time themselves, which are “real beings” (1990 116). And he suggests that God’s infi-
nite spatial locatability, which amounts to his attribute of immensity, is the cause of
space as a distinct real being (1990, 119). So God is not space, but is present. However,
to the extent we can make this distinction in the case of God – it is clear enough in the
case of finite things that their location is different from the space they occupy – the re-
lation of dependence seems to go in the opposite direction for Newton. For example,
Newton rejects the notion that God created space in time as implying the (equally re-
pugnant) results that God was previously not present or created his own ubiquity
(DG 26). The clear implication is that his ubiquity depends on the existence of infinite
space. For otherwise it would not be absurd to suppose him present (and even ubiqui-
tous) prior to the creation of space.
106 McGuire and Tamny 1983, 351.
107 Newton 1999, 408.
108 Newton 1999, 941.
109 As an example of an ‘administrative’ reading, consider Carriero: “one could (and
probably should) translate the passage so that God “sets up” or “establishes” duration
and space (1990, 131 n. 23).
110 Newton 1999, 940.

rather conditions for the realization of his dominion. Consider the follow-
ing lines: “In him all things are contained and move but he does not act on
them nor they on him. God experiences nothing from the motions of
bodies; the bodies feel nothing from God’s omnipresence”.111 This clearly
implies that space and time, the containers of things and their motions, are
God himself and not merely his effects. Moreover, as noted above, Assimi-
lation explains the otherwise surprising claim that God’s omnipresence
does not act on bodies: space and time are causally inert (DG 21). God’s
omnipresence simply is the infinite space in which creatures are contained
and freely move.112
However, Newton also says in the General Scholium that the parts of
space and time do not exist “in the person of a man or in his thinking prin-
ciple, much less in the thinking substance of God”.113 But his point, as we
saw above, is the same as in the similar remarks from De Gravitatione: being
in space and time does not jeopardize the identity of minds as minds. A man
obviously exists in time and space, but he is “the same man throughout his
lifetime and in every organ of his senses”.114 Analogously, God is extended
with respect to his presence and persistence, but not with respect to his
understanding (though Newton concedes that the analogy is somewhat
strained, since God lacks sense organs: “we have no idea of the ways in
which the most wise God senses and understands all things”).115
111 Newton 1999, 941 f.

112 See also ‘Tempus et Locus’; McGuire 1978b, 123, and Brewster 1965, vol. 2, 154.
Koyré finds it “curious” that Newton should feel the need to emphasize that God’s
omnipresence does not act on bodies since “nobody had ever thought that God’s om-
nipresence could constitute a hindrance to the motion of bodies” (1965, 112). But hav-
ing just asserted that God does not act on bodies, he clearly wants to forestall the mis-
impression that he means the substance of God does not act on bodies. So he specifies
that it is God considered under his attribute of space that leaves bodies unaffected.
113 Newton 1999, 941.
114 Ibid. Newton goes on to say that God is “omnipresent not only virtually but also sub-
stantially”. This might seem problematic for Assimilation, which identifies space with
God’s omnipresence. For Newton elsewhere denies that space is a substance (DG 21).
But that God has substantial presence, which Newton considers necessary for virtual
presence or ‘presence of power’, does not entail that his presence itself (i.e. space) is a
substance. According to the Cartesian notion although generic attributes are merely
conceptually distinct from a substances, we must not “mistakenly tack on to them any
concept of substance” (AT 8A, 26). For example, from the fact that I am temporally
present as a substance throughout my life, it does not follow that my duration itself is
a substance. However, given my duration is merely conceptually distinct from me, un-
like my modal or accidental traits, it is fair to say that “it approaches more nearly the
nature of substance” as Newton says of space (DG 22). Thanks to a referee for raising
this issue.
115 Newton 1999, 942. McGuire seems to think that Newton changes his mind about
God’s immensity, from a literal understanding in De Gravitatione (1990, 96) to a non-
literal understanding in the General Scholium (1978a, 36). But this fails to explain
why Newton invokes the same point in both texts, that minds can be extended through

Shortly after the 1687 publication of the Principia, Newton recorded a

number of careful thoughts on space and time and their relation to God. In
these pages, dubbed ‘Tempus et Locus’ by J. E. McGuire, Newton reaffirms
many points from De Gravitatione: space and time are common affections
of anything that exists; they are not directly perceived by us; their parts are
not separable; mere infinity does not make space and time to be God. He
also lists no fewer than seven theological advantages of a spatial and tem-
poral God. The fourth seems to classify space and time as attributes of
God. Newton asks whether it is more agreeable “that all properties (proprie)
of created things imply imperfection, to the extent that they are infinitely re-
moved from God, or that creatures share as much as possible the attributes
of God (attributa Dei)”.116 The implication is that space and time, while
mere properties in us, are in God attributes on a par with his power and wis-
dom. We share in them best if they are the space and time in which we live
and move.
The famous association of absolute space with the ‘sensorium’ or ‘sen-
sory’ of God in the Queries to the (1706) Latin translation of the Opticks,
and in subsequent (1718, 1721) editions, can be understood as presenting
the epistemological and volitional correlates of the metaphysical doctrine
that space and time are generic attributes of God. As noted above, Newton
wants to hold that God is extended (though indivisible) in his attribute of
immensity, but unextended and simple in his attribute of understanding.
Furthermore, the divine mind perceives and produces all bodies in space.
But how does a simple intellectual substance both comprehend and cause
things that occur within itself ? In the Opticks, Newton offers the analogy of
sense perception in animals. Just as animals directly perceive the “sensible
species” arriving through organs and nerves in their ‘sensorium’, “there is a
being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space, as
it were his sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly
perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence
to himself ”.117 The same analogy explains God’s power over bodies: “being
in all places, [God] is more able to move the bodies within this boundless
uniform sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the parts of the uni-
verse, than we are by our will to move the parts of our own bodies”.118 This
does not make God the soul of the world, he cautions, since what God
moves in his sensorium are analogous to human ideas not human bodies:
space and time without having parts in themselves. McGuire himself provides a very
nice discussion of this point in the earlier article (1978a, 30 f.).
116 Newton ‘Tempus et Locus’; McGuire 1978b, 121.
117 Newton 2004, 130.
118 Newton 2004, 138. See also the drafted but never published Corollary 9 to Proposi-
tion 6 of Book I of the Principia: “There exists and infinite and omnipresent spirit in
which matter is moved according to mathematical laws”. Ms. Add 3695.6, 509. f. 266;
quoted in Westfall 1980, 509.

“he is no more the soul of them than the soul of man is the soul of the
species of things carried through the organs of sense into the place of its
sensation where it perceives them by means of its immediate presence”.119
Whether or not bodies are ultimately absorbed into God’s mind, on this
model, it is clear that absolute space is no more distinct from God than the
sensorium is distinct from animals. For the sensorium is simply the ‘space’
of our immediate awareness of ideas. Clarke does his best to make this clear
to Leibniz, who had accused Newton of attributing sense organs to God:
“The word sensorium does not properly signify the organ but the place of
sensation”.120 Later, he cites Scapula’s definition: “the place where the mind
resides”.121 Properly understood, the analogy forces us to take seriously the
line from Acts (17–28) that Newton (along with many other seventeenth-
century writers) liked to invoke: ‘In him we live and move and have our
being’.122 For we live and move in the space of God’s perceptions just as our
ideas come and go in us as we perceive and reflect upon the world.123
The Clarke-Leibniz correspondence provides additional support for As-
similation, especially the explicit gloss or correction to Clarke’s exposition
that Newton himself drafted for a published edition of the exchange. As
119 Newton 2004, 138.

120 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Clarke’s Second Reply; 2000, 12.
121 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Clarke’s Third Reply; 2000, 20. The conception of space as the
frame of God’s sensory awareness is asserted earlier in the (c.1690) manuscript ‘Tem-
pus et Locus’: “understanding everything to the utmost, freely willing good things, by
his will affecting all possible things, and containing all other substances in Him as
their underlying principle and Place; a substance which by his own presence discerns
and rules all things, just as the cognitive part of man perceives the forms of things
brought into the brain and thereby governs his own body” (McGuire 1978b, 123).
122 General Scholium (1999, 941); ‘Tempus et Locus’ (McGuire 1978b, 121); draft
Preface (Koyré and Cohen 1962, 99); Malebranche, Search After Truth, Book. 3,
Part II, ch. 6 (1997, 235); Locke, Essay, Book II, ch. xiii, Sec. 26 (1975, 179); Berkeley,
Principles of Human Knowledge, Sec. 149 (1948–1957, vol. 2, 109). Around the same
time the ‘sensorium’ query was composed, David Gregory recorded the following
from a late 1705 conversation with Newton: “He believes God to be omnipresent in
the literal sense […] for he supposes that as God is present in space where there is no
body, he is present in space where a body is also present” (Hiscock 1937, 30). In the
“twelve articles” from Newton’s theological manuscripts we learn that “The father is
immoveable, no place being capable of becoming emptier or fuller of him than it is by
the eternal necessity of nature; all other beings are moveable from place to place”
(Keynes Ms. 8, Art. 5; McLauchlan 1950, 56). See also the manuscript ‘Irenicum’:
“A being immoveable & the first cause of motion in all other things for he is neces-
sarily in all places alike so that no place can subsist without him or be emptier or fuller
of him than it is by the necessity of nature.” (Keynes Ms. 3, fol. 35)
123 In a famous discussion, Koyré and Cohen point out that in early copies of the Latin
(1706) edition of the Opticks – the first to include Queries mentioning God’s sen-
sorium – there is no qualifying ‘tanquam’. This qualification was introduced, presum-
ably at the request of Newton himself, prior to binding; but the original phrasing still
survives in a number of copies. Koyré and Cohen speculate “that it was the earlier dis-
carded text that expressed Newton’s true convictions” (Koyré and Cohen 1961, 566).

mentioned above, when Leibniz asks in his third letter whether Newton is
among those “modern Englishmen” who hold space to be “God himself or
one of his attributes, his immensity”,124 Clarke answers that space is not a
being in its own right, but a “property or consequence of the existence of an
eternal and infinite being”.125 He then indicates that Newton is indeed one
of those modern Englishmen: “Infinite space is immensity; but immensity is
not God; and therefore infinite space is not God”.126 So, as I argued above,
one can deny that space is God while still cleaving to the doctrine that space
is the attribute of immensity. Leibniz later objects to the identification of
immensity and space: the extension of a being is not the same as the space it
occupies since the latter can change while the former remains the same.127
Predictably, Clarke insists that space is “not the affection of one body or an-
other body or of any finite being, nor passes from subject to subject but is
always and invariably the immensity of one only and always the same im-
mensum”.128
Space is the attribute of God, but merely the location of bodies. This dif-
ference is obscured somewhat by Clarke’s indiscriminate characterization
of space and time as ‘properties’ of God.129 So Newton welcomes the op-
portunity to clarify the matter in the Preface he drafted for the 1720 edition
of the correspondence, edited by Pierre Des Maizeaux. Newton writes:
The reader is desired to observe that wherever in the following papers through unavoid-
able narrowness of language infinite space or immensity & endless eternity or duration
are spoken of as Qualities or Properties of the substance which is Immense and Eternal
the terms Quality and Property are not to be taken in the sense wherein they are vul-
garly, by the writers of Logic & Metaphysick applied to matter; but in such a sense as
only implies them to be modes of existence in all being and unbounded modes and con-
sequences of the being which is really necessarily Omnipresent and Eternal; Which
existence is neither a substance nor a quality; but the existence of a substance with all
its attributes, qualities and properties and yet is so modified by place and duration that
those modes cannot be modified without rejecting the existence.130
124 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Third Letter; 2000, 14.

125 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Clarke’s Third Reply; 2000, 19.
126 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Clarke’s Third Reply; 2000, 19. For a good overview of the issue
of divine eternity and immensity in the correspondence, see Vailati 1997, 18–37.
127 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Fifth Letter; 2000, 45.
128 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Clarke’s Fifth Reply; 2000, 70.
129 Koyré 1957, 307 n. 15, makes the interesting suggestion that Clarke uses the term
‘property’ rather than the “more correct one” ‘attribute’ because Leibniz had raised
the specter of Spinoza (Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Second Letter; 2000, 9) and Clarke there-
fore avoided the notorious pantheist’s terminology. He also points out that in the
French translation, reviewed by Clarke, ‘attribut’ is used. Although Newton never
mentions Spinoza (and probably never read him), Koyré is certainly right that Newton
would have repudiated any association, since Spinoza’s views were anathema and
openly attacked by friends of Newton, including More, Boyle and Clarke himself. See
Colie 1963.
130 Koyré and Cohen 1962, 96 f.

The Preface opens with an identification of infinite space with immensity

and of infinite duration with eternity. Newton goes on to emphasize that
space and time are not mere qualities or properties of a thing, but its very
existence considered in certain ways, just as in De Gravitatione space and
time are ways of designating the quantity of a thing’s existence.131 Such ways
of existing are found in all beings, but are unbounded (infinite) conse-
quences only of the necessarily eternal and omnipresent being.132 He thus
erases the causal language employed by Clarke. It is imprecise to say that
God’s “existence causes space and time”,133 since these are ways of designat-
ing God’s existence itself. As such, they count as Cartesian attributes:
neither qualities of things nor separate things in their own right, but
“modes under which we consider the things in question” (AT 8A, 26). Thus,
Newton goes on to observe in a subsequent draft of the Preface that “the
schoolman made a nunc stans to be eternity & by consequence an attribute
of God & eternal duration hath a better title to that name tho’ it be but a
mode of his existence”.134 Rather than the obscure ‘standing now’ of tradi-
tional theology, the attribute designating God’s eternity is simply infinite
131 Janiak 2008, 143 n. 23, also notes this parallel between the draft Preface and De Gravi-
tatione. For different accounts of what motivates the draft Preface, more in line with
Causation, see Slowik forthcoming, 27–29; McGuire 1978a, 9–14; Carriero 1990,
123 f. It is surprising for Carriero to suggest that Newton was motivated to write the
draft because he was alarmed at Clarke’s literal construal of the famous verse from
Acts about living and moving in God. For in the published 1713 General Scholium
Newton himself had already asserted unflinchingly “in him all things are contained
and move” (1999, 941). Vailati suggests that Newton wants to think of space and time
as neither names nor adjectives, but adverbs “which apply not only to the existence of
the divine substance, but to the attributes as well” (1997, 37). However, Newton
clearly emphasizes that “space and time are modes of existence” which “cannot be
modified without rejecting the existence”. They are not merely qualities of a thing’s
qualities but the total existence of the thing itself considered as present and persistent.
For an explanation of Newton’s resistance to Clarke’s terminology that is different
from my own, though still consistent with my overall Cartesian interpretation, see
Grant 1981, 252.
132 The failure to appreciate that Newtonian space and time are Cartesian attributes
rather than mere accidents or properties can lead to serious confusion about their on-
tological and modal status. For example, Edward J. Khamara suggests that the abso-
lute and necessary status of space and time is jeopardized by Clarke’s assertion that
space and time constitute the attributes of immensity and eternity: “if they are prop-
erties of God, then in the relevant sense, they are relative rather than absolute beings”
(2006, 26). What Newton tries to make clear in the draft Preface is that space and time
are not dependent on God in the way properties are dependent on a substance: they
are ways of conceiving the existence of God himself. If God is absolute and necessary,
then his ways of existing cannot fail to be. Khamara would have been well served by
attending more closely to the draft Preface rather than dismissing it as “sheer obfus-
cation” (2006, 27).
133 Leibniz/Clarke 1717, Clarke’s Fifth Reply; 2000, 71.
134 Koyré and Cohen 1962, 97. Newton also rejects the traditional, non-successive, model
of divine eternity in ‘Tempus et Locus’ (McGuire 1978b, 121).

time itself. With help from Descartes’ metaphysics, Newton finally closes
the narrowing gap between the immutable, boundless attributes of God and
the invariant, infinite coordinates of quantitative physics.135,136
AT Oeuvres de Descartes: Descartes 1976; trans. Descartes 1984–1985 and 1991.

[Citation by volume and pager number.]
DG De Gravitatione et aequipondio fluidorum. In Newton 2004. Originally published in
Newton 1962. [Citation by page number.]
MD Disputationes Metaphysicae: Suarez 1965; trans. Suarez 1995 and 1998. [Citation
by disputation, section and paragraph; volume, page number.]
ST Summa Theologiae: Aquinas 1964–1981.
135 As proponents of Causation emphasize (McGuire 1978a, 13; 1990, 96; Carriero 1990,
123), in the fifth draft (E) of the Preface, Newton observes that when the Hebrews
called God MAKOM (place) they “did not mean that space is God in the literal sense
for they used to speak of God by figures & illusions & put space for his omnipresence
in a figure” (Koyré and Cohen 1962, 101). I argued above that even if space is a divine
attribute it is not correct to say that space just is God since God has numerous
attributes. But here Newton seems to say space is only figuratively, and so not even
partly, God. However, as Copenhaver notes, the meaning of ‘MAKOM’ in the Old
Testament is ‘place, location, situation’ (1980, 492). So Newton could mean that the
Hebrews spoke figuratively in referring God to a particular place or location in space
as opposed to absolute space itself. Thus, Newton opens every draft of the Preface by
cautioning that space and time are not qualities in the sense this applies to “matter” or
“finite beings”. Rather they are quantities that result from the existence of an eternal
and infinite being. God does not have a place in the way finite things do since God is
not located in absolute space; and for this reason ‘MAKOM’ is figurative. Newton
puts the point this way in the fourth draft (D): “the Hebrews called God MAKOM
(place) […] putting place by a figure for him that is in all places” (Koyré and Cohen
1962, 99). Calling God MAKOM is figurative because God’s infinite presence is only
figuratively a particular place. McGuire is correct to observe that “Newton’s use of the
Hebrew term Makom is meant to convey the idea that God dwells in space” (2000,
284). But for this very reason ‘MAKOM’ is used figuratively since, as the General
Scholium says, God is not in space, rather “in him all things are contained”. Granted,
in draft E, Newton writes that it is ‘space’, rather than ‘place’, that is only figuratively
God. However, even this assurance is preceded by a qualification (which was crossed-
out): “that space is not [the substance of God] […] in the literal sense” (Koyré and
Cohen 1962, 192). This suggests that Newton was inclined to think, if not publish,
that space is God, but not his whole substance. The MAKOM reference does not ap-
pear at all in the printed version. Besides the later Maizeaux drafts, the only other
known appearance of the term is the earlier ‘Tempus et Locus’. Here, he is much less
guarded, declaring only that “the Jews more correctly called God Place, MAKOM”
(McGuire 1978b, 121; see also Westfall 1971, 397 f.). For discussion of the Kabbalstic
influence on early modern English theories of space, including Newton’s, see Copen-
haver 1980.
136 For helpful and generous comments on earlier versions of this paper, I would like to
thank Amy Ihlan, Carla Palmerino, Eric Schliesser, Noa Shein, Edward Slowik, the
Archiv referees and editors, and audiences at the Leiden-Duke Workshop on Funky
Causation, the New York/New Jersey Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy, the
Pittsburgh Workshop on Newton and Empiricism, and the Macalester College Sym-
posium on Secularism.

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Gorham - Newton On God's Relation To Space and Time

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Newton on God’s Relation to Space and Time:

The Cartesian Framework

Beginning with Berkeley and Leibniz,1 philosophers have been intrigued

Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie 93. Bd., S. 281–320 DOI 10.1515/AGPH.2011.013

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7 For recent discussions of De Gravitatione that emphasize the dynamical criticisms of

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similation pointed to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More as a possible

10 For example More, Enchiridium Metaphysicum, ch. 8; 1995, 57.

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2. Against Independence and Causation

The first part of De Gravitatione presents a devastating barrage of objec-

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12 See DiSalle 2002 and 2006, ch. 2.

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tinct idea of body simply as extension and of God as infinite un-extended

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other words, emanative causes necessarily produce their effects simply by

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28 MD 17, 1, 6; Suarez 1965, vol. 1, 582; 1994, 10.

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accidents or ‘propria’ of God.35 Third, De Gravitatione contains forceful at-

35 Carriero 1990, 122 f.

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40 Immortality of the Soul, Axiome XIV; 1987, 37.

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46 Slowik (forthcoming) mentions the role of eminent containment in Newton’s causal

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3. Space as a Cartesian generic attribute of God

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God”.54 However, Newton expressly states that space is a not a substance

54 More, Antidote Against Atheism, Appendix, ch. 7; 1997, 338.

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Whatever the remote influence of More, Gassendi and Charleton on

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68 In their inventory of the dog-earings in Newton’s copy of Descartes’ Principles,

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(3) Generic attributes are unchanging. In Principles I, 56, Descartes says

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(5) Generic attributes are merely conceptually distinct from substances

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Descartes, that we are tempted to categorize space and duration as sub-

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Collectively, these parallels suggest a Cartesian source for Newton’s

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4. Objections and replies

81 Schliesser (forthcoming) proposes a formal-causal model of Newtonian emanation

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The important thing for Assimilation is that Newton’s efforts to protect

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88 Thanks to Noa Shein for this objection.

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empty space we posit something real: “Although space may be emptied of

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96 Here is an important disagreement with Descartes, incidentally. He regards duration

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from God no less than on the Cartesian or Aristotelian conceptions of

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111 Newton 1999, 941 f.